


This Be the Verse

by draculard



Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning, Set after The End, canonical character deaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-29 23:58:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18304136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard
Summary: If she could, she would surround his body with flowers.But he wouldn't like that, of course.





	This Be the Verse

Had he died anywhere else, Violet would have lined his body with hollyhocks. She can see him lying in his best suit, adorned with flowers, in some bright corner of her mind. In real life, his hair is stiff from the saltwater of the sea, his clothes dusted with sand.

She wonders if maybe he prefers it this way. Already, his lips are cold.

He’d want to be burned, she suspects, but for now the air is thick with the smell of his blood, and she can’t imagine tainting it further. Not until her head clears and her stomach stops protesting. She can almost feel the smoke burning in her lungs, acrid and tinged with the unmistakable flavor of roasting flesh. And besides, she’s not sure she could ever burn a dead person.

Not even Count Olaf.

* * *

That first night, they leave his body near the water, too exhausted to move him after the hours-long process of transporting and burying Kit. When everyone is asleep — Klaus holding Sunny, Sunny holding Beatrice, all of them breathing as one — Violet stands up and walks silently, on bare feet, to the beach. She ties her hair up with a ribbon, her eyes hard; the moon is high and bright, and she doesn’t stumble on the path.

She watches the cold waves come in and swirl around Count Olaf’s body. They aren’t powerful enough to carry him away.

The island is freezing when the sun is down, but no matter how cold she gets, Violet can’t tear herself away. Her eyes are dark, emotionless — but they’re glued to Count Olaf, to the dark water seeping into his clothes. It’s over an hour before she realizes what she’s looking for.

She’s waiting for him to start shivering.

Something in her chest loosens. Her eyes feel like they’re on fire, but she doesn’t cry, and she doesn’t blink.

When the sun comes up, drying the wet sand on her feet, Violet is still there.

* * *

They bury him next to Kit, of course. Perhaps it isn’t what he would have wanted — and almost certainly, it’s not what Kit would have wanted. But it’s easier for the Baudelaires. There aren’t many places on the island high and dry enough for burial.

Klaus helps her dig a grave. They work in companionable silence, with Sunny playing nearby and Beatrice swaddled and sleeping to the side. She wishes he wasn’t there. There are some things she can’t share with Klaus, some feelings she can’t articulate until she works them out internally first. What should be a moment of quiet self-reflection and hard work becomes a seering irritation.

She wishes he would go away.

She wishes he would go away.

She wishes he would go away.

She thinks it so much she develops a headache, pounding in time to the words. _Look after Bea_ , she thinks, so desperate for him to leave that she might cry. She wills Beatrice to wake up and start crying, or for Sunny to fall and skin her knee, but it doesn’t happen, and Klaus continues to work alongside her, his sleeves rolled up and his glasses falling forward on his nose.

He doesn’t seem to notice her consternation, and eventually it all fades away, leaving Violet feeling numb. Her arms ache horribly by the time they finish the grave. Klaus climbs out of it first and pulls her up, and then they both stand staring at Count Olaf’s body.

Neither of them wants to do it. Neither of them can move.

This is her chance.

“Klaus,” says Violet, “I’ll do it.”

He wipes the dirt off his sweaty palms and pushes his glasses up, but he doesn’t say anything. Just looks at Olaf, his mouth forming a thin line.

“Someone needs to take Sunny home to make dinner,” Violet says, relieved to find a reasonable excuse hiding in her brain. She can’t read Klaus’s expression; but finally he nods grimly and turns away. He rests a hand on her shoulder briefly before he goes, offering comfort, offering support, offering his gratitude.

Now that he’s leaving, she feels like she might cry. She wants to grab him and hug him tight, until they forget everything that’s happened since their parents died.

But she doesn’t. She swallows back tears and stands at the side of Olaf’s grave until Klaus is gone, until Sunny is gone, until the two of them have wandered off entirely with Beatrice in Klaus’s arms, still asleep. When she can no longer hear their footsteps, she realizes she’s been holding her breath, and when she gasps for air, she hears a sob lodged in her throat.

Count Olaf’s body is wrapped in an old sail. Klaus did that himself; he read about burials at sea once, in a book on 19th Century immigration, and he knew the proper procedure, how to fold the sheet just-so, so that it wouldn’t come loose. The only aspect they neglected was the iron chain traditionally sewn into the bottom of the sheet, to keep the body from floating to the top.

Since they aren’t actually burying Olaf at sea, it seemed unnecessary.

Violet tiptoes around the open grave and kneels beside him. She pulls the material around his face free; his eyes are closed, his hair in disarray. Grains of sand are dried onto his cheekbones, and she brushes them away with a gentle hand.

Klaus isn’t here to see her.

Trembling, Violet leans down and presses her lips against Olaf’s. He’s still and cold beneath her, unresponding. He tastes like copper, like the strange, hybridic apples.

When Violet pulls away, he is still lying dead, of course. This is no fairy tale; she can’t awaken anyone with a kiss, particularly not a man she hates, a man who’s done nothing but harm her, a man she barely knows.

“Goodbye,” she whispers as she pulls away. Despite herself, her heart is aching. She brushes the hair back from his forehead, studies his closed eyes.

She realizes she’s waiting for him to respond.

* * *

That night, and every night thereafter, Violet falls asleep with her arms around Klaus, with Klaus’s arms around Sunny, with Sunny’s arms around Beatrice. Their eyes drift closed simultaneously; their breathing synchronizes; exhaustion sinks in, turning their limbs to lead.

They have no one but each other now. No one else will help them, a lesson she thinks they’ve finally learned.

But before she falls asleep, she remembers Olaf biting into the apple, Olaf carrying Kit to safety even as he was dying, Olaf leaning over to give her a kiss.

 _Man hands on misery to man_ , he said.

Man hands on more confusing things than simple misery, she thinks.


End file.
